Local officials say it’s a miracle anyone survived the crash of a TransAsia flight in Taiwan on Wednesday that left at least 26 people dead.
A man driving on Taiwan’s National Freeway No. 1 captured the crash on video which made it appear the engines failed causing the plane to fall out of the sky. The plane barely missed the main highway before clipping a taxi and the edge of a bridge on the way into a river.
Officials say that 18 people are still missing in the river but that 15 people were rescued and rushed to hospitals including a toddler. The driver of the taxi and passenger were also injured in the incident.
Local Taiwan broadcasters played a recording of the plane’s last contact with the control tower where the pilots repeat “Mayday” three times. The pilots offered to details as to what may have caused the crash.
TransAsia director Peter Chen told reporters that plane was one of the newest in their fleet and had been in service for less than a year. The pilot reportedly had 4,900 hours of flight experience, leading officials to say it’s likely mechanical failure was the cause over pilot error.
A truck driver involved in a horrific crash in New Jersey is crediting God for saving his life.
“I don’t know that to think,” Mario Quiroz, 53, told CBS News. “I just think that God gave me another chance to live.”
Quiroz was driving a truck full of mulch on a highway in Union, New Jersey. James Pinaire, 24, drove his car into the path of a fuel tanker carrying over 9,000 gallons of gasoline. The tanker than slammed into Quiroz’s truck.
Pinaire was pronounced dead at the scene. The tanker driver is in critical condition at Robert Wood Johnson Community Hosptal.
Quiroz’s truck was engulfed in flames. His driver’s side window would only go halfway down but somehow he could squeeze through it.
And his only wound was a small cut.
“When I look at the video, I think, … my dad had an angel over him,” Quiroz’ daughter stated. “God gave him another chance to live. … He feels blessed.”
The senior pastor of Bahamas Faith Ministries International Fellowship is dead after a plane crash in the Bahamas.
Myles Munroe was killed along with his wife, daughter and six others when their plane struck a construction crane in a shipyard next to the airport and crashed into a junkyard. No one on the plane survived.
Munroe was leading a Global Leadership Forum that included world leaders such as ambassadors to the United Nations.
“He was indisputably one of the most globally recognizable religious figures our nation has ever produced,” Bahamian Prime Minister Perry Christie said of Munroe. “His fame as an ambassador for the Christian ministry preceded him wherever in the world he traveled, whether in the Caribbean, North America, Asia, Europe or Africa.”
The Associated Press says that severe weather had an impact on the crash.
